Our NFS 2007 Photo Calendar shows you a great reason to visit (or move to!) Spain every month of the year. All of the large, colourful photos come from my personal collection, gathered over 8 years of wandering through this beautiful country. Much better than the usual calendars you see in the shops at this time of year, because, like everything else in the new Notes Shop, this one also helps support Notes from Spain! 😉
Month: October 2006
This image (see large version), caught my eye as I was browsing through the excellent offerings in our Flickr group this month. It made me think of the immigrants toiling away in terrible conditions in the mass-fruit-producing plastic greenhouses in Almeria.
As the author, Multum in parvo, explains, however, “it was actually on the road to Pozo Negro, a tiny fishing hamlet on the West coast of Fuerteventura in the Canary Islands. The Island is very barren and dry with very little cultivation to be seen. The road is through typically red, rocky soil and someone has obviously tried to grow something in this site as there is a vast area of ruined greenhouses. We saw the same ones last summer but much of the structure has now been dismantled and you can see the netting lying in rolls all over the ground. I suspect the whole thing will be gone soon. This time we managed to climb over the fence and go inside for a closer look, it’s very weird with black fastenings hanging from the ruined roof and the wind whipping the netting into fantastic shapes and making the most eerie noises. If you look at my Fuerteventura tags, you’ll see some shots of the road where the greenhouses are to get an idea of the colour and harshness of the landscape as well as pictures taken last year.”
These are what the Spanish are stooping to pick off hillsides in these autumnal days, the wonderful, bright orange mushrooms, niscalos, that we mentioned in the last Cuisine from Spain podcast. Personally if I saw these in a field I would think twice about eating one, but apparently they are very nice – so they should be at 9 euros a kilo!
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Notes Shop: the NFS T-Shirt and more!
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By popular demand the Notes from Spain and Notes in Spanish T-Shirts are here at last! NFS has teamed up with the web’s favourite T-Shirt maker, Cafepress, to bring you t-shirts, aprons, mugs, notebooks – with many of the designs based on suggestions made by you in the forum.
This seasonal mushroom dish, made here using wild setas, can actually be adapted to make a great tapa all year round.
Ingredients:
4 cloves of garlic
3 Tbs olive oil
Half a kilo/1 pound wild mushrooms (setas)
Half a glass of white wine
3 sticks of parsley
Salt (a generous pinch!)
Pepper (optional)
Preparation:
Start by washing the mushrooms thoroughly, then place them in a sieve and let them dry for a while – if you need to cook them immediately, dry them a bit with a tea-towel. With the type of mushrooms I used, you can simply tear them into strips but if you use button mushrooms you need to slice them with a knife.
Put all the oil in a frying pan and wait till it starts to smoke. Add the garlic, which has been previously peeled and sliced roughly, and stir with a wooden spoon. When the garlic starts to brown add the mushrooms and stir them every now and again for 5 minutes. At this point add the wine and turn the heat down to medium. After another 5 to 10 minutes add the parsley and serve immediately.
Tips
If you want to try adding even more flavour to this dish, you can fry some bacon or ham (serrano or parma) in the oil with the garlic (remember that the garlic will need less time than either of these ingredients.)
If you can’t find wild mushrooms that you thing will be suitable, standard or button mushrooms will do just fine.
Discuss this recipe in the forum
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Enchufe: NFS Spain Glossary
The other day I was telling my sister-in-law about a relation of mine who has just landed an important job at Reuters UK, a job gained entirely through hard work and personal merit. “In Spain”, she replied, “that job would only be for the son of someone important”, (‘solo para el hijo de.‘ were her exact words, and no, she wasn’t swearing.)
The point is that nepotism is rife in Spain. From getting a decent job, to finding your way onto an oversubscribed course, to having your internet connection up and running faster than anyone else – if you have a friend or relation in the right place, known as an Enchufe, you’re sorted.
The interesting thing is though, that no one in Spain really seems to mind. There is very little resentment of the enchufe system (until it’s your turn to loose out). This is probably because everyone is enchufado (plugged in) to some extent, and as long as their pizza is arriving hotter because their mate rides the delivery bike, or their son gets a better promotion because daddy knows someone who knows someone in HR, then everyone seems quite happy to let this little bit of sociological corruption run and run.
And if you are worried that as a foreigner in Spain you’ll never get Enchufado, just how many good reasons do I have to give you for getting an intercambio?! 😉
350 pistols and revolvers were stolen from a company in France last night in a raid that seems to have been carried out by ETA. At least 5 were involved in the robbery in Vauvert, near Nimes, tying up hostages with handcuffs that were reportedly stolen from Gendarmes by members of ETA on March 5th, earlier this year.
The Partido Popular, doubtless delighted to see Zapatero made to look stupid at this very provocative action (the first since the announcement of the ceasefire in late March, when ETA promised not to rearm) have called this a Political Statement. Whatever it is, this action certainly won’t help engender a sense of trust in ETA amongst the ordinary men and women on the streets of Spain.
Sources
El Mundo news link. Plus, the comments below the 20Minutos article certainly hint at the attitude of the people on the street – “zp ha dejado que ETA se rearme de nuevo”, Zapatero is gifting ETA the chance to rearm again. Update: More in the Guardian.
We all know that there has been a lot of corruption in local councils and town halls over recent years – half of Marbella’s politicos are permanently in and out of prison these days… But things must be pretty bad when President Putin uses Spain’s woes to make Russia look good.
There is obviously no point in putting too much faith in his comparison, as one quick Google Battle easily proves!
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Signs of things to come
Two of my photos from our recent trip to the Valencian Coast struck me as interesting:
“España es un pais desunido e incierto que no sabe a donde va.” Spain is a separated and uncertain country with no idea where it is heading. The graffiti on this ruined house, hidden behind a wild stretch of beach near Gandia, is not uncommon. It could have been there for years. The next photo, by contrast, hints very strongly as to where Spain is heading.
This sign, posted in the lobby of the block of flats where we stayed in Gandia, deals with the simple matter of the local refuse collection service. But look closely: in order to communicate with the population of Valencia as it stands today, the message is written in Valencian, Spanish, Bulgarian, Romanian, Russian and Arabic. A sign like this would never have been seen 5 years ago, probably not even 18 months ago for that matter. After hundreds of years, is Spain becoming a truly plural society again?
Notes from Spain by Ben Curtis 